Clinging In The Dark
by KickingRoses
Summary: A one-shot set the night after Vince saves Howard from Monkey Hell. Cue bittersweet fluff.


**Evenin' all. Here's an angsty/fluffy one-shot I writ a while back on LJ. It's set almost straight after "Bollo". Thought I'd post it here for you all while you're waiting for the next chapter of My Reason which should hopefully be up tomorrow or early in the week. **

**Disclaimer: Not mine.  
**

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_"No smoke without fire - which, incidentally, you'll be seeing a lot of from here on in!" Mocked the Ape of Death, the savage joke instantly followed by a round of loyal laughter from his henchmen._

_"Everyone's a comedian 'round here, ain't they." Howard groaned._

_The laughter stopped._

_"SHUT YOUR PIE HOLE! PREPARE TO DIE!" The Ape of Death's voice roared to match the flames glowing in the pit before him._

_"Aren't I already dead?"_

_"Well...it hurts more the second time."_

_Howard looked down. So this was it. Death. Nothingness. On second though, hardly nothingness seeing as what apparently awaited him was an eternity of writhing and screaming in a lake of searing hot lava and brimstone. He tried once more, in vain, to fight against the ropes keeping his hands bound above him. What had he done to deserve such an end? He'd always followed the rules, always toed the line and did as he was told, helped his mother out with looking after the house and his family when his father was too busy gambling away their food budget down the bookies. Now all those good deeds were to be wasted just for a stupid rumor started by his supposed-best friend._

_The smoke and heat billowed up to summon a fresh sheen of sweat to Howard's forehead. And where was said best friend now? No doubt still fretting over the news that his hair would fall out at some point in the next forty years of his life. Of course he wouldn't be thinking twice about saving Howard. The electro poof hadn't even appeared to have missed him at all. No tears shed at his funeral. No rush to embrace him when he'd appeared as a ghost. He hadn't even played the record Howard had requested to be played should his 'Time' come - yet still managed to find it only to smash it later. Now he had a chance to save his dead friend. But, of course, preserving his precious barnet for all time would always come first for Vince Noir._

_A lever was pulled and Howard felt himself being moved forwards, the tips of his toes leaving solid ground and going to hover over the Pit of Eternal Fire. Clarity in his vision began to dissolve to blurs. He coughed, then spluttered, acrid smog clogging up his throat. The flames began to rise up around him, ready to consume him for all time._

_'Ok, Vince...You can come now. You can save me.'_

_He was being lowered into the pit. The flames rising up like amber claws to the legs of is ape-suit. A tiny ember flew up into the air to land on Howard's ropes that were binding his hands together. The spark ignited. A new flame was born. Growing. Burning._

_'Honestly, Vince, take your time. Well, no, please, I would actually liked to be saved now. Please. Vince. Vince! VINCE!"_

_The ropes disintegrated. He fell._

***

Howard awoke with a gasp that echoed around the small hut. '_The hut...My hut. At the zoo.'_ thought Howard, _'That means...I'm alive. I'm not dead._ _It was all a dream. A god-awful dream!_' He repeated the words in his head like a mantra, part of his senses still smelling and feeling the smoke and unbearable heat from Monkey Hell. Not to mention how his body was shivering with the chilling impending doom that the End was approaching him with no one coming to save him. That he'd lived without meaning anything. To anyone. Ever.

Relief was suddenly kicked to the sidelines by self-pity and depression. He thought again about his laughable excuse for a funeral. Someone must have contacted his parents or anyone else in his family. Howard couldn't wait to question his mother about why she'd been unable to attend; already hearing a pathetic uncaring excuse in her typical callous, drunken slur. Not even Mrs. Gideon had attended. And everyone who had been there had probably spent all of the time wishing they could be either smoking a hookah, masturbating over a primate porn mag, listening to Gary Numan or kissing Dixon Bainbridge's toenails.

The miserable maverick bit down on his lip, hating how the silence and stillness of the night always brought these moments of negative contemplations on how much of a failure he truly was. Howard was a loner. But not always by choice. And, in that moment, loneliness was the last thing he needed to add to his list of reasons why he should've let himself be thrown into that fiery pit forever. He began to pat the spot beside him, feeling for his slumbering companion.

"Vince....Vince, you awake?" He whispered reluctantly, part of his brain telling him not to let the smug, chirpy Mowgli see him so unguarded and vulnerable. But Howard needed a friend. He needed his best friend. "Vince...Vince?" His hand continued to search blindingly. Howard could feel the cool material of a sleeping bag, yet no curled-up body inside of it.

Howard sat up, trying to blink through the darkness of the hut only to be met with the vague familiar outlines of furniture. He shuffled, legs still tangled in his own bag, to the coffee table and turned on the small desk lamp. Part of the room was revealed in a fading amber haze - Howard made a mental note to buy a new light-bulb. He rubbed some of the sleep-sand out of his eyes. Sleep-sand; that's what Vince always called it, a reminder of the sand man having visited to send someone to sleep. Howard wearily assumed the Sand Man had only decided to blind Howard into slumber that night whereas he'd obviously been persuaded by Vince, after a chat about the wonderful David Bowie, to join him out clubbing at one of his favourite flimsy bars, leaving Howard alone to his nightmares. That sounded about right.

Looking to his watch, Howard saw that it was only just gone one in the morning. If he didn't get back to sleep now then he'd be wiped out in the morning when he was expected to feed the parrots at half eight. Not that coming back from the dead deserved any kind of leniency, especially not with Bob Fossil as your boss. Groaning once again, Howard was about to flop back down onto his bag, not caring to wonder where his sunny apprentice had wondered off to at this time. He could only pray that his subconscious would be kinder to him. For once.

Before he could so much as lay down, Howard's ears pricked up at the sound of something small and frail humming near to him. Unlike most of the typical ambiance sounds in the zoo such as monkeys laughing, lions grizzling and Fossil crooning out Bonnie Tyler - this sound actually sounded _human_. Almost. Howard wondered if it could be a mouse squeaking. No. That wasn't squeaking. It was snuffling.

Crying.

Howard tilted up the head of the desk lamp to shine more light into the room. Then, under one of the kitchen tables, he spotted the creature that was making the sound. Howard's jaw dropped. Was he still dreaming? The sight before him sent more shivers down his spine then the nightmare before had. Vince was curled up into a tight ball - knees to chest, head in arms - shaking as whimper after whimper went through his system. This wasn't Vince. It can't've been. This thing was far to small and broken to be Vince Noir; cockney bitch.

Whether it really was Vince or not, Howard's heart couldn't take with just sitting and watching like a useless nosy rock. He kicked his legs out from his sleeping bag and crawled over to kneel under the table, placing a none-too-weary (not to mention unfamiliar to physical contact) hand on Vince's shoulder.

"Vince...Vince, look at me..." Howard nudged carefully. He had thought about if his friend was sleep-walking...or sleep-sitting, remembering how dangerous it was meant to be to wake them up. Howard didn't want to seem a hypocrite after all the times he'd snapped at Vince for disturbing him awake from a Jazz trance.

The electro boy slowly raised his head, two wide, unearthly blue eyes meeting Howard's, teartracks glistening from them down his cheeks. He continued staring at his older friend, mouth open, sobs having been silenced for the time being.

"Hey, little man." Howard forced a smile, taken aback by the look of shock and disbelief that seemed to be sunken into his friend's pointed face. "What're you doing down here for, eh?"

Vince closed his eyes again, hiding his face before the tears began to fall again; "Go away!"

Howard started back, his heart plummeting; "Vince?"

"I...I can't..." Vince cried, shaking his head, somehow making himself look and sound even tinier. "I can't keep seeing you...You're not really here, I know it...Just leave me alone..."

Howard's chest tightened, his brain finally registering what was happening. He'd have time later for being touched by it all. Now he had to get Vince out from under the table. He reached forward and pulled the younger man out to him by his wrists. Vince tried to struggle against him, always keeping his eyes shut tight, and even going so far as to almost kicking out at Howard like a child having a tantrum. Howard didn't give up though. He was overwhelmed with a burning need to comfort his little friend and as soon as he'd dragged Vince towards their sleeping bags, he took a much-needed inhale of air in order to discard one of is basic principles of life - and pulled Vince against his torso, putting his arms around him and rocking him gently.

Vince continued to writhe in Howard's embrace, his efforts weakening as he descended into heavier, more rasping cries, his tears soaking through Howard's pajama shirt; "No, please....Please, leave me alone...I-I..."

"Shhh, shhh, Vince...Vince, it's ok. It's alright, it's ok," Howard whispered, daring to put a hand up to touch his hair. Unkempt. Unbrushed. Yet still so soft and beautiful. The head shook beneath his palm.

"No...No, it's not...You're dead, Howard...You're _gone_!" His voice cracked at the last word, the sound that broke Howard's heart.

"I'm not, Vince. Not anymore. See? See, look at me, Vince. Look at me." Howard pulled back only slightly, his hands still clamped protectively on Vince's back and head, just to allow his friend's eyes to meet his, even though they remained scrunched up and closed. "I'm here, little man. Howard's here, see?"

Vince squinted open his eyes, probably half-expecting nothing but air and shining dust-sprites in the light when he opened them. When he saw the body of the man holding him, his face widened again with a mixture of child-like awe and curiosity. He put his hands up to feel Howard's face, slender fingers tracing over the maverick's chin, cheeks, nose, brow and hair. His cries had stopped, replaced with the occasional sniff but he did nothing else to break the stunned silence encircling them both. Howard tried not to blush, or worse, well up, at the feel of Vince's fingers caressing his face. He just sat there, letting the smaller man feel he was real, the words "don't touch me" not even phasing his mind in that blissful, tender moment. Vince's hands then dropped slowly from Howard's face and fell instead upon his chest. On his heart.

When satisfied by the rhythmic beat of life coming from within, Vince looked up at Howard again, a smile slowly but surely lifting upon his lips, those baby blues beginning to sparkle again in the amber-tainted darkness. "Howard...?"

Howard put one hand to hold the one Vince had placed over his heart, using another to wipe away the droplets of tears left clinging to his smooth cheeks. He smiled warmly; "Told you, didn't I."

"You...you're real? You're really here?" Vince sniffed, still unsure.

"'Course I am. You know I am. You brought me back, you lemon, remember?" whispered Howard, rubbing his friend's goose pimpled arms.

Vince ducked his head, his ruffled fringe falling slightly; "I...I thought it was like...the other nights...I'd wake up and think you were there beside me. And sometimes I'd see you. Even though you weren't there...I was so scared, H'ward."

"Shhh, hush now, little man," Howard crushed Vince to his chest as he started to cry again. "You don't need to be scared anymore, I'm back. It's all over. I'm alive. I'm here. I'm right here, I've got you, and that means everything's gonna be ok, yeah?"

Vince nodded against him. Howard held him tightly, continuing to rock him slowly, his hands stroking his hair and his back. He felt Vince's fingers grab at the thin fabric of his pajama, keening his face against it as if trying to bury himself in Howard's warm chest. Tears stung in Howard's eyes at the thought of his friend having suffered all those nights in this shabby hut alone, in the same state he'd found him in tonight, with no one to comfort him. What if he'd also been the one who found his body? His stomach twisted painfully as he pictured the scene - Vince never having seen a proper dead body before. Not realizing what had happened to Howard. Shaking him. Calling his name over and over. _Oh, Vince..._

Howard had been told in Limbo how time passed differently between the two worlds. An hour of driving through Purgatory in a black cab had allowed a whole week to pass back on Earth. Not to mention how long sitting in that Death Cab HQ drinking tea had lasted for - when all that time his friend had been like this. No wonder he'd apparently cried himself out by the time Howard had gone to haunt him. His beaming smile from having saved Howard from hell hadn't left his face for the rest of the day. He'd always thought that Vince was too small to have more than one serious emotion go trough him at a time.

Now, in the dark of the night, in the stillness and silence, his bubbling cauldron of emotions had obviously got the better of him. It was all too much for the electro boy to handle. Or maybe, Howard thought to himself, he was just really happy that he was back again. Howard decided, dumb as it were, to cling to the second option. It made just as much sense for someone with a mind as slow as Vince's for there to be a delayed reaction of a good few hours before taking in the seriousness of events. Better late than never. He felt a warm bloom in his chest beneath where Vince's head was laid. He tilted his own to plant a kiss on his friend's soft hair. For a second he thought that Vince had fallen asleep on him. Then he heard another snuffle, and a pair of arms wrapped themselves fully around his waist.

"Please....promise me, Howard....Promise me you'll never leave me again." Vince begged him, his voice still so tiny and pitched.

Howard thought about replying smartly on how it hadn't been his choice to leave him the first time. But instead he decided to hug his friend tighter and say; "I promise, little man. No one'll ever take me away from you ever, ever again."

Vince sniffed; "And if they do...I'll just keep on 'avin' to save you. Even if it means goin' to hell and back. Again....And sod the taxi fare."

Howard allowed himself a whisper of a laugh. He kissed his friend's hair a second time, before realizing for the first time just how far he'd let the both of them push past his physical boundary limit. The line in the sand was now a speck on the horizon. He thought about shrugging Vince off and crawling back inside his own sleeping bag. Vince must have been reading his thoughts, or maybe he was doing that annoying habit of speaking his inner monologue out loud again, as the mod merely tightened his hold around Howard's body. The maverick sighed; Vince felt so small and fragile in his arms, plus he was still sniffing back tears.

"...'Love you, Howard. I love you so much."

Vince had mumbled the words ever so weakly against him. So quiet that Howard believed he'd imagined them. Hence why he didn't say it back. Not then. Not with his heart in his throat. But he swore to himself that he would, when the time was right, when they were both wide awake and in a moment as close and tender as this again. Then he'd know for sure if he'd heard him right.

All he could do in that moment, however, was continue to pet the younger man's hair and whisper softly; "Go to sleep, sweetheart. I'll stay here. I won't let you go. Not ever."

After a couple of minutes of soothing, sniffling and rocking, Howard looked down to see that Vince had fallen asleep against him, clinging to him even more in his sleep, as if to anchor him to the world forever. Howard shook his head fondly. The younger man was attached to him like an infant orangutan. It was too late at night and Howard was too tired to even attempt to move him. He shuffled back and sat up against the front of the warn-out sofa, making himself up as a human bean-bag chair and blanket for his sleeping friend. Vince nuzzled his head beneath Howard's chin, humming contently. Howard could feel him smiling against him.

He knew it would be a while before he'd be able to fall asleep again. The longer it took, the better, he thought to himself. That nightmare before would keep him weary of closing his eyes again for a good few hours. Yet the thought of sitting up in the witching hour, with nothing but a flickering nightlight and his own wondering thoughts, wasn't as daunting as it had been before. He didn't feel that his mind could wonder to anywhere too cold or dark. Not as long as he continued to hold the small body of sunshine and rainbows in his arms, listening to his gentle breathing and sharing his sweet warmth. There was no way his mind could visit hell again. Just for one night, heaven had locked him in.

_"'Love you, Howard. I love you so much."_

Someone has missed him. Someone had saved him. Someone loved him. Not just _someone_. Vince. And before his body could give in and drift off to sleep, Howard felt, for once, the exact opposite of worthless.

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**Hope you enjoyed. Reviews would be dandy. **


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